Canada: 2020 C8 Corvette Production Close To Sold Out

DON'T WASTE A GOOD AUTOMOTIVE CRISIS

Results from the world's largest car maker are no guide to
events in the global auto industry, but they do highlight how
investors should approach it. Crisis, if properly exploited, will
be where opportunity lies in a deteriorating industry environment.
Against a backdrop of falling auto sales and rising technology
costs, Volkswagen AG —the top-selling vehicle manufacturer
globally in recent years—reported remarkably stable results
Thursday. Revenue in the first half was almost 5% higher than in
the same period of 2018, because of strong pricing and a rising
share of sport-utility vehicle sales. Unlike its German peers
Daimler AG and BMW AG, VW hasn't issued any profit warnings
this year. The company's relative strength stems in part from
its well-established brands, from VW itself to Audi and Porsche,
and dominant positions in the key markets of China and Europe.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

FORD, GM INVEST BILLIONS IN SELF-DRIVING CARS AMID UNCERTAIN
FUTURE

Ford Motor Co., General Motors and other carmakers are pouring
billions of dollars into developing autonomous technology as
companies come to the realization that launching the self-driving
vehicles will be much more difficult than previously
envisioned.

So far, Google's Waymo is the only company offering a
self-driving, ride-sharing fleet in the Phoenix suburbs. The
growing focus by Silicon Valley tech giants on autonomous
technology is increasingly worrisome to Ford, GM and others,
according to former executives and industry insiders. The fear is
that the offering will be too difficult to develop and the firms
will be forced to license software from Google or Apple,
effectively giving those companies ownership of the customer
interface and, subsequently, all the data that is collected. While
companies may make some profits off of providing mobility services
like ride-sharing, the major revenue stream for self-driving cars
will be in the user information they gather. The key question
is how to monetize that data and it has industry leaders stumped,
according to Bharat Balasubramanian, a former executive at Daimler
AG and current professor at the University of Alabama. "This
is the biggest challenge for all automotive manufacturers," he
told FOX Business. "The Google model is much more powerful.
They can build up a fantastic predictive model of your habits and
of everyone around you and that model would be worth
billions."

Ford disclosed on Wednesday that it spent $264 million in the
second quarter on its autonomous effort and other mobility
initiatives, a 46 percent increase from the year prior. The
Dearborn, Michigan-based carmaker previously announced an expanded
partnership with Volkswagen on developing the technology with
partner Argo AI. And the most important part of that deal is the
data, according to Ford President Jim Farley. The two companies
plan to market their respective vehicles separately, so no customer
information will be shared. Executives at the firms
acknowledged the long road ahead in bringing self-driving cars to
consumers, but Ford is already plotting how to monetize the time in
which customers are in the vehicles.

Among other initiatives, the company is in discussions to
provide licensed content to riders catered to how long the drive
is, something akin to a Netflix show that may last only seven
minutes or basketball games that are condensed to 30 minutes.

Ford's Farley estimates that as much as 95 percent of the
revenue from the vehicles will come from the time spent inside the
car. And for the past three months, he's been working with
external partners on those offerings. "We're going to
build a whole new group of services that people don't see
today. We need, as an industry, to start educating our stakeholders
about what those businesses are going to look like," he told
FOX Business "The tech is great, but once we get past the
tech, what matters is the businesses and those experiences for the
customers."

As Ford eyes future revenue streams, General Motors is pumping
the brakes on its own self-driving program. The Detroit-based firm
announced on Wednesday that it would not meet a self-imposed
deadline to roll out a large number of self-driving vehicles by the
end of the year, to give GM and its partner Cruise more time to
conduct testing. "In order to reach the level of performance
and safety validation required to deploy a fully driverless service
in San Francisco, we will be significantly increasing our testing
and validation miles over the balance of this year, which has the
effect of carrying the timing of fully driverless deployment beyond
the end of the year," Dan Ammann, Cruise's top executive,
wrote in a post.

Waymo and Cruise did not respond to interview requests for this
article.

Despite the struggles facing the industry, the self-driving
programs are still drawing ample investment. Cruise, for example,
has raised more than $7 billion from GM, Honda, and others. The
company expects to spend over $1 billion this year on developing
and testing autonomous technology.

Source: Fox Business News

PORSCHE 911 ECLIPSED

Porsche's iconic 911 sports car, which shaped the German
brand's luxurious appeal for decades, may soon be eclipsed by
the battery-powered Taycan in terms of deliveries.

Just over a month before its official unveiling in September,
Porsche has already amassed deposits for nearly 30,000 Taycans, and
the early haul supports plans to lift annual production of the
brand's first all-electric model to 40,000 vehicles, Evercore
ISI analyst Arndt Ellinghorst said Monday in a note.

With Porsche delivering 35,600 911s last year, the Taycan -- to
be priced at roughly $90,000 -- could zoom past the combustion-era
hero to define the brand for the next generation.

Success of the Taycan is critical for parent company Volkswagen
AG to boost the appeal of electric cars as it prepares for a
rollout of battery-powered vehicles across all price ranges. The
Taycan's arrival could also pose a fresh challenge to Tesla
Inc.'s Model S, a key vehicle for Elon Musk's effort to
make the electric-car leader profitable.

Tesla hasn't detailed plans to overhaul its successful Model
S luxury sedan that's been on sale since 2012, betting on the
Model 3 to target mass-market buyers instead. While sales have
risen, the car's lower returns have seen Tesla's losses
accelerate to cast fresh doubt on whether building and selling
electric cars can be a sustainably profitable business. Tesla's
bid to expand outside the U.S. "is essentially a down-market
push that will exacerbate eroding gross margin," Bloomberg
Intelligence analyst Kevin Tynan said in a note. The
California-based firm is at risk of trading in a strong domestic
position "to scrap with local rivals in foreign
markets."

Porsche has taken a page from Tesla's playbook. Customers
can register as a prospective Taycan buyer by placing a 2,500-euro
deposit, which gets deducted from the final purchase price. To help
drive uptake, Porsche is installing fast chargers at dealerships in
the U.S. and Europe that will load the Taycan's battery with
enough power to drive as far as 100 kilometers (62 miles) in four
minutes. The car's total range on a single charge stands at 500
kilometers.

Porsche set an initial production target of 20,000 vehicles per
year, based on a two-shift system, but that can be expanded if
needed, production chief Albrecht Reimold told reporters last
year.

The company has been rapidly building up capacity in recent
months. For the 1,500 new hires needed to produce the Taycan,
Porsche said Monday that it has recruited nearly 1,000 so far after
receiving some 32,000 applications. The training process for the
electric-car assembly lasts as long as six months.

Source: Bloomberg

FORD BUYS DEFENSE CONTRACTOR TO GET ROBOT RIDES ON THE
ROAD

As Ford Motor Co. bears down on a self-imposed deadline to field
robotaxis and driverless delivery vehicles in two years, the
automaker has acquired a small defense contractor whose experience
could help get auto-piloted cars on the road. This month, Ford paid
an undisclosed sum to acquire Quantum Signal AI, a 40-member team
of roboticists operating out of a decommissioned 1930s-era high
school in Saline, Michigan, just up the road from the University of
Michigan. The 20 year-old firm has experience working with the U.S.
military on sniper simulations and remote-controlled sentinel
robots.

Source: Bloomberg

2020 C8 CORVETTE PRODUCTION CLOSE TO SOLD OUT

Anyone concerned Chevy has made a mistake by turning the
Corvette into a mid-engine car with the arrival of the C8
generation shouldn't be, at least as far as sales are
concerned.

Chevy presented the new 2020 Corvette to the public for the
first time on Saturday at the 2019 Concours d'Elegance of
America in Plymouth, Michigan, where a number of the car's
designers, including General Motors design chief Michael Simcoe,
were on hand. Simcoe revealed to Autoblog at the event that the new
Corvette's first year of production was close to sold out,
without mentioning any numbers. "I think the orders have
already hit the first year of production numbers," he said.
"It's nearly sold out. It's so close that it's
bound to be sold out soon."

Chevy started accepting orders for the new Corvette following
the car's July 18 reveal so the pace of sales has been nothing
short of dramatic, though it's easy to see why. The car offers
performance and technology surpassing many exotic models for a
starting price of under $60,000.

Chevrolet spokesman Kevin Kelly told Motor Authority, "The
level of enthusiasm around the 2020 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray has
surpassed all expectations. We have nothing to report in terms of
reservations or order numbers at this time." Chevy's last
Corvette hit sales of just under 35,000 in the United States in its
first year on the market. Given Chevy's global ambitions with
the new Corvette, sales could be substantially higher. In
preparation for the car's arrival, Chevy expanded the Corvette
plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and added a second shift.

Source: Motor Authority

GM FACES DECLINING SALES AND PRICE WARS IN LARGEST MARKETS

General Motors Co's investors will see on Thursday how the
Detroit carmaker is weathering declining sales and mounting price
pressures in its largest markets when it reports second-quarter
earnings. Slumping industry demand in China, the world's
largest auto market, and an escalating price war in the lucrative
U.S. pickup truck segment are ratcheting up the pressure on GM.
Other automakers, including U.S. rival Ford Motor Co and
Germany's Daimler AG, offered disappointing forecasts last
week. Source: Reuters

DANA TO SUPPLY ELECTRIFIED DRIVETRAINS

$15M fuel-cell trucking project in Alberta

Transmission and axle supplier Dana Inc. will provide an
electrified drivetrain system to power tractor-trailer units that
will move freight year-round between Edmonton and Calgary as part
of a three-year $15-million project.

The Alberta Zero-Emissions Truck Electrification Collaboration
(AZETEC) project involves the design and manufacturing of
heavy-duty, extended-range, hydrogen fuel cell electric hybrid
trucks. AZETEC will test hydrogen as a zero-emissions alternative
fuel to diesel for freight transportation, along with the
refuelling infrastructure and other systems that would be required
for Alberta to implement this new fuel solution. Dana says in a
statement its electrified Spicer e-System is "optimized for
the Canadian market" and has the capacity to haul 140,000
pounds (63,500 kilograms).

The supplier didn't divulge terms of the deal.

The B-train tractor-trailers — with two trailers linked
together — to be used in the project will have a gross weight
of 64-tonnes and the capability to travel up to 700 kilometres
between refuelling.

Emissions Reduction Alberta, which gets its funding from the
province's Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund, is
committing more than $7.3 million to the AZETEC project.

Source: Automotive News Canada

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